I used to have a computer boot sequence that required almost a kibuki-dance of flipping switches and pushing buttons.
Of course, nobody was going to die if I got it wrong. :-)
Are they harder than military jets? I know military jets are hard to fly, but it is my understanding that we have managed to teach non-college-educated people how to do it.
I have no doubt there is a lot of learning to fly a jet, but it still seems like it’s a lot of rote learning. A pilot doesn’t have to come up with a new WAY of flying, right, just learn how every other pilot would throw all the switches and set all the settings for a particular circumstance?
Maybe my distinction isn’t obvious. Maybe most pilots could, with the proper college education, do any other job they wanted as well. I just haven’t known anybody who said they wanted to be a pilot, who came back months later and said they failed at it because they weren’t smart enough.
And you weren’t traveling at a serious percentage of the speed of sound.
Multi-engine jets are tough, military or civilian, instrument licensing is tough, military or civilian. Nobody said anything about having to be college educated, there’s plenty of hard stuff out there that doesn’t need college education.
It’s not rote learning, it’s teaching instinct. 99.9% of all non-combat flying is the most boring job in human history. But then there’s comes the other .1%, the times they have to ditch in the Hudson, or land in fog with 40MPH winds across the runway. Just like when something bad happens in your car the difference between surviving and not is instinct, the guys that have it live, the guys that don’t don’t. You can train instinct, but it takes many hours to do so.
How many of the people you know went all the way to multi-engine instrument licensing? Probably none. It’s a lot more training, a lot more money, and takes a lot more smarts.